


Do Not Disturb

by mountain_born



Series: The Marvelous Tale of an Agent, an Archer, and an Assassin [21]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Doctor Who/Avengers Crossover Fusion, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2804780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountain_born/pseuds/mountain_born
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When River, Clint, and Coulson go for an impromptu Halloween trip with the Doctor, they find themselves in a strange hotel where the rooms are full of nightmares, a monster roams the halls, and their worst fears are waiting to greet them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First off, thank and kudos once again to my incomparable beta, **like-a-raven** who managed to whip this into shape between NANO and Christmas madness.
> 
> This fic is the _Marvelous Tale_ take on the Doctor Who episode, _God Complex_ , so basic plot elements and some dialog have been lifted from canon. As with _Image of an Angel_ , this is taken out of the canonical timeline and adapted for this series.
> 
> The story will be posted in four parts, but since Christmas is literally right around the corner there will be no gap between postings; it will be posted in its entirety by Monday.
> 
> And just as a random PSA, I discovered tonight that while adding a hefty shot of bourbon to one's tea is a great way to unwind from a stressful week, it can make basic HTML coding moderately difficult. Learn from my experience.
> 
> Happy Holidays, everyone!

_October 31, 2010_  
 _Place: Unknown_

_Trick or treat?_

That question more or less summed up what it was like to disembark from the TARDIS, River thought. The TARDIS was quirky in that respect. She had a mind of her own and sometimes that mind was at odds with the person piloting her. There was no telling what might be outside of her doors.

Would it be pastoral countryside or a warzone? Past or future? Palace or cave? Space ship or. . .

. . .a hotel?

“This doesn’t look like a land of giants to me. Does it to you?” Rory asked.

River shook her head, looking around at the ivory-striped wallpaper and floral carpets. 

“Not so much,” she said.

Wherever they were, it was scaled to regular-sized human beings. Not Ravan-Skala, then, where the Doctor claimed that the citizens were six hundred feet tall on average. He had described it in enthusiastic and vivid detail, trying to sell the SHIELD agents on coming along on the trip.

It had been a pretty easy sell, in all honesty. Coulson, especially, had been eager for a distraction. For the last few weeks he had been trying, unsuccessfully, to corner Tony Stark for a debriefing on what had happened to him in Afghanistan. River had noticed that he had been growing increasingly tight-lipped when Fury and Hill asked him for updates.

Besides, they hadn’t had any plans for Halloween.

The TARDIS might have pulled a trick with their destination, but the Doctor certainly seemed to find it a treat. In fact, he was almost beside himself with excitement.

“I don’t get it,” Amy said, standing back as the Doctor bounded past her to inspect a bowl of apples on a side table. “What’s so exciting about a rubbish hotel on a rubbish bit of Earth?”

“This place looks like something out of the 1980s. Is that where we are? When we are?” Coulson asked.

“Where the hell is everyone?” Clint asked, leaning over the banister to look up the stairwell. The TARDIS had parked itself on a landing of a wide staircase, one that seemed to go right up through the heart of the building, but there was no one in sight. No employees, no guests, no one.

Clint looked to River. “That’s weird, right? Someone should have heard us land.”

“One would think,” River said. 

The TARDIS had a lot of strategic advantages, but stealth upon landing wasn’t one of them. The ship was, in a word, _loud._ That was what happened when one flew with the brakes on, which the Doctor had a bad habit of doing. 

River leaned next to Clint on the banister and looked upward. The stairwell disappeared into darkness. The building couldn’t possibly be that big, could it? 

“It certainly doesn’t look abandoned,” she added.

The lights were on, the place was spick and span, and cheery musak was playing over the speaker system. None of those factors pointed to a lack of habitation.

“Maybe it’s like that lost colony in America,” Rory said. “Roanoke. The one where they say everyone just vanished off of the face of the Earth.”

“Nope!”

River had been watching the Doctor out of the corner of her eye as he examined the wallpaper and fondled the houseplants. He bounced back into their midst now, beaming like Time Lord Christmas had come early.

“ _Nope? Nope_ to what part?” Rory asked.

“The main part,” the Doctor said. “In this case, Earth. No one in this instance has vanished off of the face of the Earth, because we’re not on Earth.”

“We’re not?” Coulson asked.

“No. It _looks_ like Earth. It’s actually an amazing facsimile. I mean, just look at this level of detail.” 

The Doctor plucked one of the apples out of the bowl on the sideboard and tossed it to River for closer inspection. She caught it handily, rolling it between her palms. It certainly seemed like the real thing; looked, felt, and even smelled like an apple.

She drew the line at seeing if it tasted like a real apple, though.

“Who would go to the trouble of mocking up an ordinary Earth hotel, though?” Amy asked.

“Colonists, maybe,” the Doctor said. “Or it could be a theme destination of some sort. Whatever it is, I can’t wait to meet the people responsible. Come on.”

The Doctor straightened his bow tie and started down the carpeted stairs. 

“Where are you going?” Rory called after him.

“Reception,” the Doctor called back. When the others didn’t follow quickly enough, his voice echoed impatiently up the stairs. “Ponds! SHIELD! Come along. Don’t dawdle!”

“You heard the man,” Amy said, starting for the stairs. “Let’s go see what’s down below.”

*****

The lobby and the reception desk were likewise deserted. No friends, no foes, at least not that Clint could detect.

“Hey.”

Clint looked to where Rory was standing before a wall covered with framed photos. The other man waved to Clint, beckoning him over. 

“What do you make of these?” Rory asked.

The rows of photos reminded Clint of those “Employee of the Month” walls people put up in restaurants and big-box stores; mediocre headshots with little plaques underneath. A lot of the pictures were of ordinary-looking people, presumably human, but there were a handful of others who definitely weren’t. Looked like the Doctor was right about this not just being a regular Earth hotel.

“ _Tim Heath: Having his photo taken,_ ” Rory read off of one of the plaques. “ _Commander Halke: Defeat._ ”

“ _Lucy Hayward: That brutal gorilla._ ” Clint scanned the other photos in the row. “ _Lady Silver-Tear: Daleks_. What the hell is this?”

Clint had yet to see a Dalek. Having heard the Doctor talk about them, he’d be happy to keep it that way. What the hell did a Dalek have in common with gorillas and cameras? 

“What do you think?” Rory asked.

“I don’t know,” Clint said.

It was hard to evaluate a threat that couldn’t be pinpointed, and in spite of the fact that there was nothing hostile in sight, Clint couldn’t shake the uneasy prickle on the back of his neck. He was tempted to go back up to the TARDIS to retrieve a weapon. He, River, and Coulson had left their side arms on board. Ravan-Skala, according to the Doctor, had strict laws about visitors carrying arms, and they hadn’t wanted to run afoul of local authorities, especially when those authorities were over six hundred feet tall.

At least the TARDIS was right upstairs. The safe house was close by if they needed to fall back.

*****

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to feel like it’s properly Halloween,” Amy said to River.

The hotel might actually be less creepy if the place were dark and rotting. Instead Amy found herself silently vowing never to watch _The Shining_ ever again. She fought off a shudder.

“And here I am without my trollopy policewoman costume,” she added, trying to lighten her own mood a bit.

River raised an eyebrow at her. “You have a trollopy policewoman costume?” she asked.

“It’s leftover from my kiss-o-gram days. Rubbish job, but I held on to some of the outfits after I quit.” River looked amused, and Amy felt herself blush. “What? It’s just for a bit of fun. Are you telling me that you and Clint never get up to a spot of--”

“Classified,” River said quickly.

“Oh, I bet it is.”

“Although, I must say,” River added, looking around the eerie and yet completely ordinary hotel lobby, “I wouldn’t turn down a billy club and a pair of handcuffs. Just as a precaution.”

Amy nodded, patting River on the back.

“That’s my girl.”

*****

“Were you expecting to find someone on duty?” Coulson asked.

“You never know,” the Doctor said. “It’s called _Reception_ for a reason.”

The Doctor leaned over the hotel’s front desk, inspecting the area behind it. There was nothing all that interesting there. Just some scattered pens and notepads, the usual office flotsam and jetsam. There were no helpful signs or forms. No handy brochures saying _Welcome to Hotel Whats-its-name, Finest Accommodations on Planet So-and-so._ No reluctant welcoming committee hiding under the desk.

“Perhaps they’re all in back having their tea,” the Doctor said, levering himself upright again. “One way to find out.”

With a flourish, he brought his hand down on the bell on the desk.

It was just for show, really. In the Doctor’s experience, the Universe was never that convenient. He certainly didn’t expect a trio of screaming people leapt seemingly right out of the woodwork.

“Blimey,” he said. “That was a bit quick.”

*****

Coulson was good at sizing people up. He had to be. In the field, being able to tell innocent bystander from hostile threat could be the difference between life and death.

In his professional opinion, these three civilians were not a hostile threat. Hell, one of them (a rabbity-looking alien called Gibbis) was clutching a white flag for God’s sake.

The other two civilians, Howie and Rita, were human. Howie was just a damn kid, all gawky limbs and shaggy hair and scared out of his mind if Coulson was any judge. Rita, a medical student, was more composed and clearly the leader of the ragtag group. She was no slouch at reading people, either. In the short interval between the screaming and the introductions, she’d edged cautiously up to Coulson and the Doctor, studying their eyes.

“Their pupils are dilated,” she’d said to her friends. “They’re as surprised to see us as we are to see them. Besides which, if this is a trick, it’ll tell us something.”

If Coulson didn’t know better, he’d think the Doctor was experiencing love at first sight given the way his eyes lit up at her initial analysis.

Rita was also the one who got her companions calmed down and shepherded them into explaining their situation to the newcomers. She, Howie, and Gibbis sat together on a sofa in Reception while Coulson and the others formed a half-circle at enough of a distance to keep them from freaking out.

“So, to sum up,” the Doctor said after they had finished, “you were all going about your normal days, you blacked out, and you woke up here. That was two days ago. And you haven’t been able to find a way out of the building.”

Coulson glanced over his shoulder at what should have been the building’s entrance. At Rita’s direction, Clint and River had opened the doors and pulled back the drapes of the windows. There was nothing there but solid, blank brick. The whole place was sealed.

Fucking creepy, and that wasn’t even the worst of it.

“The walls here move,” Howie said. The kid swiped at his nose with a shaky hand. “Everything here changes. We weren’t anywhere near Reception when we came around the corner and there you lot were.”

Rita patted Howie on the shoulder. “The corridors twist and stretch,” she elaborated. “Rooms vanish and pop up somewhere else. It’s like the hotel’s alive. And there’s more,” Rita said. “The rooms have _things_ in them.”

“What kind of things?” Amy asked.

“Bad dreams.”

Something about the way she said it sent a little trickle of ice water down Coulson’s spine. Or maybe it was just this place. The longer they stayed here, the more it felt like this hotel was designed to subtly scare them. 

_Happy Halloween, everyone._

Even the Doctor seemed to feel it. Coulson had long ago come to the conclusion that the Time Lord’s curiosity often outpaced his common sense. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the Doctor had immediately gone running off to take a look inside the closest rooms.

Instead he proposed an orbital scan to get the lay of the land and see exactly what they were dealing with. For the Doctor, that was downright cautious.

“We’ll pop back to the TARDIS,” he said, leading the way up the stairs to the landing where they’d left the ship. “I’ll do a planet-wide diagnostic sweep.”

There was just one minor wrinkle. The TARDIS was gone.

******

At some point during his so-called career as a companion, Rory Williams had lost the capacity for panic. He wasn’t quite sure when that had happened. It might have been during his long stint as a Roman Centurion, but he suspected that it had come about well before that. The only thing that could really scare Rory these days was Amy being in immediate danger.

Even then (Rory knew from experience) panic wasn’t likely to be his response in the moment. Afterwards? Sure. Afterwards he might have a good shaking fit over what _could_ have happened. But when you ran with the Doctor, you learned to keep your head in a crisis.

So, Rory didn’t panic when they saw that the TARDIS had disappeared from the spot where they’d left it. 

He also didn’t panic when Rita, Howie, and Gibbis took them back downstairs to the hotel’s dining room and introduced them to the fourth civilian they’d been taken with: Joe. Rory didn’t panic over the fact that Joe was tied to a chair, surrounded by laughing ventriloquist’s dummies, and seemed to be in the middle of losing his mind.

He thought about panicking, though, when Joe started talking. Rita had said that there were bad dreams roaming around this place. Apparently there was one big nightmare on the loose as well.

“You see these things?” Joe said, rolling his head against the back of his chair. He was smiling broadly as he looked around at the crowd of dummies that had lapsed into eerie silence when the Doctor had led their party in the dining room. “I used to hate them. They terrified me. They make me laugh, now.”

Joe rolled his eyes up at the Doctor, who was bent down to get a good look at the man. “He will be coming for me very soon. I’ve lived a blasphemous life, but he has forgiven my inconstancy and soon he shall feast.”

“He? He who?” the Doctor asked. “You’re saying that there’s someone else in this place?”

“He will come and take my life.” Joe seemed entirely too happy about that prospect for Rory’s liking. “He will take yours, too, in time.”

Rory glanced over at Rita. She just shrugged helplessly.

“How?” the Doctor asked. “How will he take us?”

“Patience, Doctor,” Joe said. “First you need to find your room. There’s a room here for everyone, even you. It will draw you in. Find your room and look upon your darkest fear. That will call him to you.”

“That’s going to put a bit of a damper on our search for the TARDIS,” Rory murmured aside to Amy.

Amy looked unconcerned. “The Doctor will figure something out,” she said. “He always does.”

Rory refrained from commenting. He knew Amy. Her faith in the Doctor was absolute and had been since she was seven years old. He didn’t think she even entertained the possibility that there was any mess the Doctor couldn’t get them out of.

For now the Doctor’s plan seemed to consist of putting a strip of duct tape (where had he even gotten duct tape?) over the rambling Joe’s mouth. Not what Rory would call especially humane, but maybe it would keep Rita, Howie, and Gibbis from losing their nerve.

Or, Rory thought as he saw Howie go wide-eyed and suddenly start tugging frantically on Rita’s sleeve, maybe it was too late to avert the freak-outs. The kid had his eyes fixed on the three SHIELD agents who were standing nearby.

“Bloody hell, _now_ what?” Rory muttered, drifting over to see what was the matter.

*****

For a moment, Clint thought that Howie had spontaneously become scared shitless of River.

There were plenty of circumstances where Clint would find that reaction perfectly reasonable. River could be as scary as fuck all when she wanted to be. Clint had seen her make men twice her size quake in their boots, and for very good reason. River was, among other things, an assassin, and she was damn good at her job.

Right now, though, River wasn’t doing anything more frightening than standing between him and Coulson and watching the Doctor when Howie flipped out. The kid was practically hyperventilating, pointing a shaky finger at River. His other hand was twisted so hard in the shoulder of Rita’s scrub shirt that the woman looked like she was halfway being strangled. 

“What?” River asked indignantly. 

It took some sputtering and some stuttering, but the problem (such as it was) eventually became apparent. Howie wasn’t scared shitless of River, he was scared shitless of her jacket. Or rather, the SHIELD emblem on it.

“I told you!” he said to Rita and Gibbis. “I said that this whole thing was some sort of CIA experiment. Messing with our heads, yeah? But it’s not, it’s SHIELD. _SHIELD!_ They’re all over the conspiracy forums. It’s got to be them that’s doing this, don’t you see?”

It took everything Clint had not to groan aloud. It figured the kid was some sort of hacker conspiracy nut. SHIELD was a pretty popular topic among that crowd from what Clint knew. The fact that SHIELD existed and served as an international intelligence agency was not a big secret. On the other hand, a lot of the nitty-gritty of what the agency actually did was heavily classified. That was one of the reasons why Clint and River were never going to be public faces of the organization. Assassins didn’t make for good PR.

But there were plenty of people out there on the fringes who liked to try to keep up with SHIELD. A few actually managed to get their hands on some actual intelligence and make some noise before they got shut down. More often you had people just make shit up whole-cloth. Either way, it was a headache.

Gibbis just looked lost. Of course, he was an alien. He had no conceptions about SHIELD one way or the other. Rita was trying, as nicely as possible, to extricate herself from Howie’s grip.

“Yes, I— _ow_ , Howie, ease off! I see it. But what--”

“I can assure you,” Coulson interrupted with the well-practiced calm Clint had so often heard him use on civilians, “this is not a SHIELD experiment. We’re as much in the dark as you are.”

“Sure. You _say_ that.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Clint could see that the Doctor was still occupied with Joe the Puppet Master. He wasn’t sure if the Time Lord was just really focused, or was electing to ignore this little byplay. Rory and Amy, on the other hand, had decided to come off the bench and act as reinforcements.

“Look,” Amy said, and Clint recognized the _I’m Scottish and not long on patience_ tone in her voice, “if this were a SHIELD experiment and they were in on it, do you think she’d be stupid enough to be walking around in a jacket with their logo on it? Think about it.”

“Yeah, besides Amy and I aren’t SHIELD and we know them,” Rory added. “They’re spies, but they’re nice.”

*****

Rory wouldn’t say that they convinced Howie, but the kid did eventually calm down and turn loose of Rita (to her apparent great relief). The boy migrated to the far side of Gibbis, putting some distance between himself and the SHIELD agents.

“What are you grinning at?” Rory heard Amy say, and looked back around at his wife and his fellow companions. For some reason, River, Clint, and Coulson all looked like they were about to start laughing. Coulson’s face was actually starting to turn red. 

“What?” Rory asked.

Coulson cleared his throat. “We’re spies, but we’re nice?”

“Yeah. . .well. . .” Rory glanced at Amy. Maybe the giggles were just catching, but Amy had a finger crooked in front of her turned-up lips like she was about to succumb herself. “From our perspective you are. You _are_ spies and you _are_ nice.”

“I think we’ve just found our new team slogan,” River said, and Clint made a noise like a choking goose.

Rory rolled his eyes. _Oh, good. The spies are having hysterics._

“Fine. See if I stick up for you lot again,” he said.

There was a squeak of wheels and the Doctor suddenly appeared in their circle. He was pushing Joe, still gagged, his chair strapped to a luggage trolley. 

“Hello. What have I missed?” he said. Even though Rory would lay odds that he hadn’t really missed anything at all.

“Nothing important,” Amy said. “What are you doing with him?” She nodded at Joe.

“Seemed to be the easiest way to bring him along,” the Doctor said. 

“Bring him along where?” Clint asked.

“On the hunt,” the Doctor said. “The TARDIS has to be around here somewhere, and I don’t think we’re getting out of here without it. And since there seems to be a deadly thing in this place that our friend Joe here is attuned to,” the Doctor patted Joe on the shoulder, “he needs to come with us. Congratulations, Joe. You’ve been promoted to canary. Now, we have a lot of ground to cover. Let’s get started.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holiday baking awaits, today, so Chapter 2 is going up first thing!

Searching the hotel was much easier said than done. The corridors really did seem to go on forever. River wondered if whoever had built this place had had access to something like TARDIS technology.

Their strange little convoy progressed through the hotel without anything resembling a search pattern. The Doctor took point while Gibbis, pushing the bound and gagged Joe, brought up the rear. There had been a time when the SHIELD agents would not have been able to help pointing out the serious lack of strategy involved in this hunt. Wandering the halls, hoping to stumble upon the TARDIS at random while the Doctor followed his nose was not the sort of plan that would fly with SHIELD.

They had learned to trust the Doctor’s nose a little more than they had in the beginning. Besides, it wasn’t like River, Clint, and Coulson were strangers to devising strategies on the move.

“You know, sooner or later we’re going to have to start looking in the rooms,” Clint said quietly to her as they walked along. 

River nodded silently in agreement. Rita’s bad dreams notwithstanding, the odds of just finding the TARDIS sitting in a hallway were. . .well, River wasn’t sure how to calculate them, but that would be entirely too easy.

 _First find your room,_ Joe had said. That was the calculated risk they were dealing with. Looking in the rooms meant that they ran the risk of finding _their_ rooms, the ones that Joe said contained their nightmares, their deepest fears. Once they found their rooms, they were somehow marked for death, they way he was. 

Assuming that what Joe had told them was accurate (and he was not just stark staring crazy) this was going to be a race-the-clock situation. They’d have to find a way out before they could be taken. The clock would start as soon as someone turned a doorknob.

Howie was the one who started the countdown.

*****

Howie had opened the door before any of the others had a chance to notice or stop him. Amy winced in sympathy at the laughter and jeering of the teenage girls inside the room. She’d been a teenage girl. She knew how they could induce terror in boys like Howie.

The Doctor pulled Howie away from his room and slammed the door closed. Howie, if possible, looked even more like he was about to go to pieces, trying to stutter out some kind of protest or denial.

“Sh-sh-shut the d-d-d-door. This is just some m-m-m-messed up gov-government experiment, I’m I’m telling you.”

“That’s right,” the Doctor said, patting Howie on the back. “Just keep telling yourself that.”

“So, I guess it’s going to be coming for Howie now, too?” Amy said quietly to River. “The thing Joe was talking about.”

“If there actually is anything,” River replied. When Amy looked at her questioningly, she continued. “We only have Joe’s word to go by that there is something dangerous here, and I’m not sure how reliable a source he is.”

That was true. Joe was presently rolling his head against the back of his chair and trying to giggle around his gag. 

“So, you think he’s might just be mad and we’re wasting time being afraid of shadows?”

“That would be the best case scenario,” River said. She smiled wryly. “We do occasionally catch breaks like that.”

Sometimes, maybe, but not this time. They paused for a moment in a spot where two corridors intersected so that the Doctor could take some readings on his sonic screwdriver. Amy had just idly picked up some crumpled notepaper that was peeking out from under a decorative table when a sound echoed down a distant hallway.

It was a roar, a primal, terrifying sound. Amy felt her heartbeat pick up and her scalp prickled like all of her hair was trying to stand on end. That was a sound that delivered a punch right to the genetic code, a sound that cave men around a campfire must have cowered in fear to.

“Okay.” Amy swallowed hard. “Whatever made that noise, that’s not real, right? That’s just one of the room nightmares. Someone’s scared of a lion or something?”

She knew that wasn’t the case at all, but even Amy Pond could give in to a moment of denial every now and then.

“Right. Yes, I’m sure that’s it,” the Doctor said. He was looking at Joe, who had started to strain against his bonds, almost upsetting the chair he was tied too. “But just in case, let’s all run and hide. Quickly, everyone. Run!”

*****

The group scattered.

As non-plans went, Clint wasn’t wild about it. Maybe he’d watched one too many horror movies, but it almost felt like this damn place was herding them. They had to take cover, and there was no good place to do that except in the rooms full of bad dreams.

Clint and River, trailed by Howie, found Rita in one of the rooms. She was being berated about a report card by a man in a lab coat. Her father, Clint would guess, if the resemblance was anything to go by. Rita, who up to this point had been admirably cool and collected, looked like she was ready to break down in tears.

“Okay, guys?” River said, grabbing Rita by the arm. “Different room. Now.”

Clint pushed Howie out of the room ahead of him while River steered Rita. From somewhere in the maze of hallways, he heard the roar again.

He hoped everyone else had found decent cover. Clint was all for facing fears, but this was getting insane.

*****

“Let me see if I understand this correctly,” the Doctor said.

Coulson was standing stiff and frozen just inside the room he and the Doctor had ducked into. He could tell by the Doctor’s voice that the Time Lord had a disbelieving eyebrow arched at him. 

“You’re a SHIELD agent,” the Doctor continued. “You’ve been shot at, captured by nasty people, on occasion tortured, infiltrated some very bad places. And your greatest fear is. . .ponies.”

The shaggy brown equine standing in the middle of the room snorted as if it agreed with the ridiculousness of the situation. It pawed one hoof at the floral carpet.

Coulson clenched his jaw in annoyance. “I had a bad experience. All right?”

Cub Scout camp. He’d been eight and it had been his first trail ride. He’d been plopped with little ceremony on the back of a barrel-shaped specimen of psychotic horseflesh named Tiny.

The fucker had tried to kill him.

“I’m not judging you,” the Doctor said.

“Like hell you’re not.”

It was almost a relief when they were distracted by a shriek from down the corridor.

*****

Weeping Angels. Rory could have gone a long, long time without seeing these things again.

His first assumption was that this might be his room. Then he thought, no, it must be Amy’s. She was standing beside him, eyes wide with horror and no doubt running an internal monologue of _Don’t blink, don’t blink, don’t blink._

Rory quickly decided though, based on the way Gibbis was cowering in the room’s wardrobe shrieking in fright, that this room must have been earmarked for the alien.

The uproar first drew the Doctor and Coulson to the room. Clint, River, Rita, and Howie piled through the door a moment later. Everyone who had been on Alfava Metraxis immediately slammed on the brakes with various exclamations of profanity.

“No, it’s all right. It’s all right. Look,” the Doctor said. 

Rory could actually feel Amy restrain herself as the Doctor reached out a hand to one of the Weeping Angels. He touched it, and then his hand passed right through it.

“They’re not real,” the Doctor said.

Everyone in the room relaxed a fraction. Until they heard an odd sound from outside: stomping footsteps, making their way up the corridor.

*****

The nightmares in the rooms might be illusions, but the monster who walked the corridors was all too real.

The Doctor frantically waved the others into silence as the footsteps approached the room, and pressed his eye to the peephole as the monster passed by. He couldn’t see a great deal of detail. It was large, that was clear. It was powerfully built, and moved with deliberation. It seemed to have the head of a beast, and the Doctor got the vague impression of horns and milky blue eyes.

It was beautiful. Unsurprising. Destructive things often were beautiful.

“I think it’s going after Joe,” the Doctor told the others quietly.

Joe, who Gibbis had apparently abandoned in order to run for shelter. Joe, who had somehow worked free of his bonds and was calling the monster to him. 

“Come to me! I’m here! Come to me!”

There was a sharp cry and then silence. Clint and River looked like they were considering pushing past him and going out to face down the enemy. The Doctor pointed a silent, reproving, _Don’t you even think about it_ finger at them. Fortunately, Coulson shook his head at them as well. It was only when it had been quiet for several minutes that the Doctor risked opening the door and leading the way out.

They found Joe’s body in the corridor.

“I don’t understand,” River said.

The Doctor was kneeling by the body. He glanced up to find himself fairly surrounded by the others. Rita and Howie were keeping their distance, watching nervously up and down the halls. 

River was frowning, as if the dead man was more something to puzzle over than be mourned. Not, the Doctor reflected, that he had much room to cast stones in that arena.

“There are no wounds,” she said, as if the Doctor couldn’t see for himself. “He hasn’t been bitten or clawed. He’s just. . .”

“Stopped,” the Doctor said, nodding. “Dead for no discernible reason.”

“Fright maybe? Could his heart have just given out?” Coulson asked.

“I’m not sure. And we’re not going to find out here.” The Doctor got back to his feet, looking at the assembled party. “I think it’s time, as SHIELD would say, for a strategic retreat.”

*****

The world could be a mad place. Rita had been relatively sheltered throughout her life, but she had seen enough to know that. Studying medicine was a sure way to lose your blinders. Still, there were certain things that one could always count on. The sun would always rise in the east. Politicians, even the best ones, were liars. And the average hotel always had a very well-stocked kitchen, even if it was a fake alien hotel.

Rita had kept her ears open while the six newcomers had been talking among themselves. They seemed to be convinced that they’d all been transported to another world or that aliens had dropped them into a mock-up. Well, it wasn’t the craziest theory Rita had entertained. It went a long way toward explaining Gibbis.

Rita finished up in the kitchen, locating adequate mugs, spoons, and a sugar bowl. She left most of the lot on the sideboard and carried a single mug out into the dining room. They’d retreated back here after they’d found Joe’s body. The SHIELD agents had said something about the room being strategically advantageous, easy to defend.

Those three were sitting together in a little clump on their own, talking. Rita paused as she went past. 

“Guys? There’s tea in the kitchen,” she told them.

The two men—the Americans—looked at her like they couldn’t quite quantify the statement or why she was informing them. Agent Song, though, was British and Rita saw a small smile and a hint of gratitude in her eyes.

“Thanks,” she said.

Rita moved on, delivering the same message to Amy and Rory. Definitely not SHIELD agents, those two. They were normal people. Normal married people; Rita would have called that without even noting the matching gold bands they wore. 

That brought her to the Doctor.

 _Doctor who?_ she wondered. Of course, the answer didn’t really matter. What mattered was that he was in charge, at least he was now. Rita was happy enough to hand over the reins to someone who had at least half a clue as to what was happening.

Right now he was performing what Rita could only assume was a postmortem of sorts on Joe. They had carried his body down to the dining room and laid him out on one of the long tables. Rita watched the Doctor scan the body with a strange device and then examine some sort of readout on the side. He frowned unhappily at the results.

He left off what he was doing when he saw her though, and when she offered him the mug of tea he accepted with a smile of mild surprise.

“I’m British. It’s how we cope with trauma,” Rita explained. “That and tutting.”

Whoever—whatever—the Doctor was, he seemed to appreciate both the tea and her attempt at humor. He also didn’t laugh when she told him her own theory about this horrible place.

“This is Jahannam,” she said.

Inexplicably, the Doctor’s face lit up. “You’re a Muslim.”

Rita wasn’t used to such an enthusiastic reaction to that bit of information, but she wasn’t going to complain about it. 

“I like you,” the Doctor said a bit more seriously, smiling at her over his mug of tea. “You’re a right clever clogs. But this isn’t Hell, Rita.”

“You don’t understand,” Rita said. “I say that without fear. Jahannam will play its tricks, and there’ll be times when I want to run and scream. But I’ve tried to live a good life, and that knowledge keeps me sane, despite the monsters and the bonkers rooms.” 

Plenty of people in the medical field found the reconciliation of faith and science to be an impossibility, but Rita had never had that problem. For her it was a source of strength. Since she’d woken up in this hotel, she’d been holding onto it all the tighter.

The Doctor opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by Amy. “Doctor? Doctor!”

She was clutching a handful of crumpled notebook pages. 

“I found these in the corridor,” she said. “I was going to tell you, but then there was screaming and the monster. . .I just remembered them.” Amy held them out to the Doctor. “I really think you ought to read these.”

*****

The others gathered around as the Doctor sorted the small pages into order. He glanced up and cleared his throat slightly.

_Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin._

“’My name is Lucy Hayward and I’m the last one left,’” the Doctor read aloud. “’It took Luke first. It got him on his first day, almost as soon as we arrived. It’s funny. You don’t know what’s going to be in your room until you see it, then you realize it could never have been anything else. I just saw mine. It was a gorilla from a book I’d read as a kid. My God, that thing used to terrify me. The gaps between my worships are getting shorter, like contractions. This is what happened to the others, and how lucky they were. It’s all so clear now. I’m so happy. Praise him.’”

“Lucy Hayward?”

The Doctor looked up at Clint. The agent glanced at Rory and nodded his head toward the doors to the lobby.

“She’s in one of the pictures out there,” he said. “We saw it when we first got here.”

“It even had a note on it about the gorilla,” Rory added. “Those plaques must all say what those people were afraid of.” He frowned. “Anyone want to lay odds that if we went and looked now we’d find one for Joe?”

“There must be hundreds of pictures out there,” Rita said. “Do we really think all of them died here?”

“That’s precisely what I’m thinking,” the Doctor said, carefully folding the notebook pages. “Those pictures? They’re like this note. It wasn’t an accident that Amy found it. Everything in this place is designed to frighten us. The perfect haunted house. This thing feeds on fear.”

“What was that last part of the letter?” Coulson asked. “What did it say?”

 _“Praise him,”_ the Doctor said.

“Praise him,” Howie echoed.

The Doctor’s head jerked up and the others all looked around to see Howie with his hands clamped over his mouth, his eyes wide with horror.

*****

The Doctor was nothing if not an opportunist, Coulson thought. That sounded bad, put so baldly, but in reality it was just good tactics. When a new problem presented itself, a good strategist could find a way to turn it into an advantage.

The monster had gained some sort of mental hold on Howie. It had established a telepathic link or fed a virus into his neural pathways, or some other explanation that Coulson would have written off as pseudo-scientific bullshit before the Doctor had become a part of their lives. 

The kid had actually tried to run out of the dining room, presumably to go get himself killed. Clint had tackled him before he’d made it ten feet.

Howie had officially been upgraded from _civilian bystander_ to _bait._ They’d tied him to a chair to keep him safely contained. The Doctor had a plan to use Howie to lure the monster out into the open and hopefully get some idea of what they were dealing with. The kid was hanging limply in his restraints, giggling with giddy delight. 

Amy and Coulson were standing guard over him together. Amy looked like she couldn’t decide whether to be concerned or repulsed.

“You want it to find you?” she asked Howie. “Even though you know what it’s going to do?”

“Are you kidding?” Howie grinned up at them. “It’s going to kill us all. How cool is that?”

The Doctor waved them all over to the center of the dining room for one last pep talk before the operation commenced. 

“This monster feeds on fear, so we all have to resist,” the Doctor ordered. “Do whatever you have to do. Cross your fingers, say a prayer, think of a basket of kittens, just don’t give in to fear. Understood?”

Coulson saw Gibbis smile in a mildly disturbing way at the kittens comment. Rita, he already knew, was reasonably devout in her religion. Coulson found himself mentally casting about for what he might use as his own anchor. 

As a general rule, mission prep didn’t require a faith touch point. Neither did his life. Coulson knew that Clint fell pretty firmly on the “atheist” end of the spectrum. River was more of an agnostic. Coulson himself had had a fairly lackadaisical Lutheran upbringing. None of them carried religious trinkets or good luck charms when they went into the field on missions that could easily get them killed. They had faith in each other and in SHIELD to back them. That had always been more than enough.

It looked like he did have an anchor after all.

Coulson automatically glanced over at Clint and River, only to find her smiling and Clint cocking an amused eyebrow at him. 

“You finally got there, huh?” Clint asked.

Coulson rolled his eyes and directed his attention back to the Doctor.

“All right,” the Time Lord said. “We’re all ready? Then let’s go catch ourselves a monster.”


	3. Chapter 3

_“Bring me death! Bring me glory! My master, my lord, I’m here! Come to me!”_

Howie’s voice crackled over the hotel’s PA system in a way that reminded Clint of the old funhouse that Carson’s Carnival had dragged around with it. It had had a sketchy soundtrack of evil clown laughter, organ music, and horror movie creaks and groans. Cheesy as hell. For a couple of years Clint had rolled his eyes at the teenage girls that had screamed their way through that old funhouse, grabbing hold of each other like the plastic skeletons and mutated mannequins were actually going to hurt them.

They acted like they really knew what it was like to be afraid of something.

After Clint had hit the pubescent point of no return, though, he’d wised up and changed his tune slightly. Instead of scoffing at the townie girls, he started offering to escort this one or that one through the funhouse. Hell, if they were going to clutch something, it might as well be him, right?

He still hadn’t been able to understand what was so scary about it.

Now, having your mind taken over like Howie and Joe? Not being in control of yourself; what you said, what you did, even what you thought? That was scary as shit as far as Clint was concerned.

“Fucking possession,” Clint muttered.

He, River, and Amy were crouched in the shadows of an alcove on the second floor. From here they had a decent, if slightly cramped, eye line to the east doors of the hotel’s spa, the source of Howie’s voice.

“Howie’s possessed by the monster,” Clint said quietly. “Cleric Elizabeth got possessed by a Weeping Angel. Phil got possessed by a freakin’ _worm._ Do me a favor. If an alien ever hijacks my brain, just put a bullet between my eyes.”

River made a soft, amused sound. “Sure. Deal.”

Amy raised an eyebrow at them. “You two have a very odd relationship. You know that, right?”

Clint shook his head and went back to watching the corridor and the spa doors.

_When is this thing going to show already?_

*****

_“I’m waiting here for you! He has promised me a glorious death. Give it to me now! I want him to know my devotion.”_

On the other side of the spa, Rory, Coulson, and Rita were crouched in a similar alcove watching the spa’s west doors. Rory found himself straining his ears, listening for footsteps or heavy breathing, anything that might clue them in to a monster sneaking up on them.

“The Doctor. He really knows what he’s doing?” Rita asked.

Rory saw Coulson look to him. When it came to explaining the Doctor to the uninitiated, the SHIELD types usually let Amy and Rory field it. 

“He knows as well as any of us,” Rory said. 

“Amy talks about him like he’s a superhero or something,” Rita said. “She said that you’ve all been in danger hundreds of times, but he always comes through and makes everything all right.”

 _Not always, and not for everyone,_ Rory thought, but that did sound like Amy. Unshakable faith.

“Look, the Doctor’s not a superhero. Not exactly,” Rory said. “He’s not infallible. But he is smart and he cares about helping people. Most of the time that winds up being enough.”

“I guess that’s good to know,” Rita said.

“Guys?” Coulson held up one hand for quiet. “I think it’s taking the bait.”

Rory and Rita immediately shut up. In the distance, Rory heard a stomping footstep. And then another.

“I guess we’ll find out if the Doctor can pull it off again,” Rory said under his breath as the steps drew closer to the spa.

*****

Down in the security office behind the Reception area, Gibbis watched, wringing his hands, as Howie monologued in the PA microphone.

“His love was a beacon that led me from darkness to light, and now I am blinded by his majesty. Humbled by his glory. Praise him!”

 _He’s going to draw the monster straight to us._ Gibbis didn’t care what the Doctor had said. There was no way this plan was going to work.

*****

Like a proper ill omen, the monster approached from the east.

The Doctor could see it, silhouetted in the open doorway before it ventured into the spa. The hotel spa was large, with partitions of wavy, opaque glass here and there. The glass seemed to be meant to evoke waterfalls. In the dim light, they provided camouflage and cover, enough to keep the monster from immediately finding and cornering him. 

The Doctor held his breath, watching the shifting shadows and listening until he judged that the monster had moved somewhere close to the middle of the space. Then he reached up and switched off the intercom, cutting Howie off in mid-sentence.

The sudden quiet was the signal that the others outside had been instructed to listen for. In a matter of seconds, both sets of doors to the spa had been slammed closed and barricaded as well as could be managed. It was unlikely that they could contain the beast indefinitely, but maybe it would be long enough to get some answers.

“Sorry for the subterfuge,” the Doctor said, stepping out of his shadowy corner. “But I think it’s time we talked, don’t you?”

*****

“Do you think that’ll hold it?” Amy asked, eyeing their makeshift lock.

They’d raided a housekeeping closet in preparation for the mission. They’d wedged three broomsticks through the door handles, locking off the spa.

“Hopefully long enough for the Doctor to get some useful intel,” River replied. “But not long enough for him to get himself killed.”

“He won’t get himself killed. He knows what he’s doing,” Amy said. She saw River frown and start to look around. “What is it?”

“Where did Clint go?” River asked.

He had been right there with them. He had helped secure the door, taken a step back, and then. . .where had he gone?

“Uh oh,” Amy said.

Halfway back down the corridor, a door to one of the rooms was open. River must have spotted it at exactly the same time, because she took off running toward it. Amy hesitated for a moment, looking back at the door to the spa, then went after her.

They found Clint standing in the middle of the room, looking up at the light fixture. It wasn’t a regular light though, Amy noted. It looked like something that should be swinging over an intersection somewhere.

The light was flashing yellow. Clint seemed completely mesmerized by it. He was staring up at it, his face set in deep frown lines. At first glance he seemed calm, but then Amy saw that he was breathing a too quickly and his eyes were a little too wide and. . .blinky. 

He didn’t pay any attention to River and Amy. It was like he didn’t even notice they were there. Amy had no idea what to do, but River was quick to take her partner in hand. She grabbed him by the arm, turned him around, and pushed him past Amy and out into the corridor.

This had to be his room, Amy thought. Though why Clint Barton, badass spy, was afraid of traffic lights was anyone’s guess.

*****

Out in the corridor, Clint braced his hands against the wall and worked on evening out his breathing. He’d been taught to do this: Calming Techniques 101. Not that SHIELD called it that, but they taught it. Agents couldn’t go to pieces or panic in the field.

Christ, he had _not_ been expecting that. Yeah, Clint had thought about what he might find in his room, if he found his room. He’d had some vague ideas about cops and social workers. Six years in the foster care system and then several more hiding out in the circus had taught him to regard both as bad news. Or there had been that interrogator from that time he’d gotten pinched in Cairo, the psycho with the collection of pliers.

Then he’d opened the door and seen that yellow light, and it had been just like Lucy Haywood had said in her letter. It could never have been anything else. 

It wasn’t like Clint had a traffic light phobia. That would be stupid, not to mention inconvenient. But that yellow light did crop up in his nightmares from time to time. Clint saw it in his dreams the way he’d seen it in real life when he was seven.

His parents had taken him and Barney into town to see a movie that night. It had been a big deal, a special treat, getting to stay up late and eat a ton of popcorn. It had been well past Clint’s normal bedtime when they’d started for home. Clint didn’t remember much about the drive—he’d conked right out on car trips as a kid—until it was interrupted by a loud squeal of brakes and a crash, and the car had flipped.

A drunk driver had blasted through the semi-rural intersection and slammed into them, though Clint didn’t learn about or process that until sometime much later. All he’d known was that he was pinned painfully in the car’s backseat and his parents weren’t answering when he called for them. All he’d been able to see, until the rescue crews arrived, had been that yellow caution light, flashing in the dark.

Clint heard someone close the door of the room. It had to be Amy because River was still right there with him, her hand pressed against his middle, under his heart, a tangible reminder to stay grounded. She didn’t say anything until Amy had hesitantly edged by them and gone to take up position in the alcove again.

Once they were as alone as it was possible to get, River broke silence. “All right?” she asked.

She didn’t have to ask anything else. River knew what that light had represented. She and Coulson knew the story better than anyone else, SHIELD Psych included.

“Yeah.” The shock of the room was wearing off quickly, thank God. Clint pushed himself away from the wall. “I guess this means I’m officially on the menu, huh?” he said.

Okay, as jokes went, that one kind of sucked. Fortunately, River didn’t love him for his comedic prowess.

“Over my dead body are you on anyone’s menu,” she replied. Clint glanced sideways to see her smiling at him. “Come on,” she added. “We need to get back into position.”

Clint nodded. Their post had only been abandoned for a minute, but that was a long time on an operation. Fortunately there was no sign of action yet. No sounds of carnage coming from the spa. No. . .

“My master! My lord, I’m here!”

Shit. They really needed a complication like this?

Amy’s head whipped around. “Is that . . .?”

“Howie,” River said. And it hadn’t been over the PA this time. His voice had come from some distant point down the halls. 

“How the hell did he get loose?” Clint said.

*****

On the west side of the spa, Rory, Coulson, and Rita were wondering the same thing.

“Someone has to go get him,” Rita said. “Before that thing in there hears him.”

“I’ll go,” Rory said, stepping out of the alcove.

Coulson automatically reached out, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him back in.

“Stand down,” he ordered.

“Excuse me?”

One of the fun little genetic quirks both Coulson and Clint had noted over the last year was that on the rare occasions Rory got pissed off, he sounded exactly like River. Fortunately, also like River, he would generally bow to a logical argument. 

“If this is about to go south,” Coulson said, “then we don’t want to split up even more than we already--”

He was interrupted by a loud roar and a crash from inside the spa.

“You were saying?” Rita said.

Coulson didn’t have a chance to respond before the barricaded door burst open with a hail of splintered wood. The last thing Coulson registered was the monster charging right at them.

*****

Sometimes an operation went bad, but was still salvageable. Other times it just deteriorated into _100% fucked_ territory. This, River thought, would be the latter.

Howie was loose and the monster had broken containment. It had practically stampeded right over Coulson, Rory, and Rita. Fortunately none of them were badly hurt. The Doctor had been picking them up off the floor by the time River, Clint, and Amy had made it around to their position.

“We need to find Howie. Move quickly and everyone stick together,” the Doctor said.

That was easier said than done. The hotel seemed to have become possessed by the spirit of M.C. Escher. Corridors twisted and turned in on themselves, and no matter how careful they tried to be (while running flat out, either in pursuit of Howie’s voice or trying to elude the monster) the building kept splitting them up, slapping them unexpectedly back together, then pulling them apart again.

At some point during the chase, River found herself alone. She wasn’t sure when or how she had become separated from the all of the others, and her bearings were completely shot. She was also, despite SHIELD training and slightly-inhuman endurance, completely winded.

River stopped in the middle of the corridor, bracing her hands on her knees, catching her breath while she had a safe moment. There was no sign of the monster. Of course, there was no sign of her friends, either. Somewhere off in the distance, she thought she heard the monster roar, but it was far enough away that she could rest for a second.

But just for a second. She had to find the others. River straightened up again, and her eyes immediately landed on the door to Room 604. 

Everything around her seemed to go silent and fade away until there was nothing left but that door, and River felt herself being drawn toward it. This was it. This was where she was supposed to be. This was why the hotel had brought her here.

River reached out, turned the knob, and opened the door of her room.

*****

“River? Come on. I just saw her up this way. River!”

The Doctor sprinted toward a convergence of corridors where he was sure he’d just seen Agent Song go past. Coulson was right on his heels. The two of them had gotten cut off from the rest of the group somehow.

He took the left turn at such a speed that his feet almost tripped out from under him. Coulson grabbed him by the back of his coat, back peddling them both to a stop as they faced down the empty corridor.

“Damn it,” Coulson said. “The hallways must have moved again.”

“No.” The Doctor tilted his head slightly, looking up the corridor. There it was, the break in the neat line of closed doors. “This way, come on.”

Sure enough, they found River in the room, and she wasn’t alone. 

The Doctor skidded to a halt, staring dumbfounded at. . .himself.

He’d seen doubles of himself before. There had been that whole metacrisis mess one regeneration ago. Prisoner Zero had thrown together a not-all-bad approximation of him, too. From what the Doctor could tell, the thing in River’s room was a perfect copy. The chin, the gangly frame, the tweed coat, the bow tie. God, was that really what his hair looked like? 

That malevolent little smile wasn’t his, though, or at least the Doctor sincerely hoped it wasn’t.

As for River, the Doctor had never seen the agent like this. Her face was too pale and her eyes were too dark, but she seemed more quietly resigned than afraid.

“River,” the Doctor said, “What. . .?”

This was River’s room. This was her greatest fear. 

_He_ was her greatest fear. 

The Doctor was aware that River had a history with him that he had yet to experience. She knew things about him, things that she wouldn’t share with him, things that he himself had yet to do. Yet for all the questions and uncertainties between them, he and River had become something like friends, just like Clint and Coulson had become his friends.

What had he done to her to make her look at him like that?

Coulson pushed past the Doctor, going straight to River. He didn’t seem a bit surprised at the sight of a second Doctor. He just planted himself in front of River, taking her by the shoulders and giving her a light shake.

“River? It’s okay. Look at me. No, don’t look at him, look at me. Are you with me?”

The Doctor saw some of the darkness drain out of River’s eyes and she nodded slightly in response.

The Doctor’s double didn’t seem to like that one little bit.

“You’ll never be able to win,” it said.

The Doctor watched River tense right back up.

“They fooled you into thinking that you’re strong,” it said. “But deep down you know you’re not. And when you fail, they’ll abandon you. You’ll have nothing and no one. You’ll be alone, except for me. It’ll just be you and me until the end of Time.”

The Doctor didn’t know what his apparently quite nasty twin was on about or what these words meant to River, and he didn’t particularly care. He did care about having his own image and voice used to terrorize someone that he liked.

“That,” the Doctor said, marching up to his double and thrusting a finger at his nose, “is _quite_ enough out of you.”

He turned to make sure River was all right, but was just in time to see the back of her. Coulson was taking her out into the hallway. Well, that was probably for the best. The Doctor started to follow them.

“Don’t turn your back on her.”

The Doctor looked back at the thing that wasn’t him.

“Just a bit of friendly advice,” it said. “From me to, well, me.”

“You know,” the Doctor said, “you lot are causing enough trouble without trying to get clever.”

He slammed the door on his way out, causing Coulson and River to start a little. River seemed to have already pulled herself back together, he noticed. If the Doctor wanted to ask her why the hell her room had had _him_ in it—and the Doctor definitely wanted to know why—he wasn’t going to get anywhere by asking now.

Just as well. They didn’t have time anyway.

“Come on, you two,” he said. “Let’s go find the others.”

*****

Rory could feel it when the monster withdrew back into the bowels of this maze it had them trapped in. It was like a storm passing.

First the roars grew more distant, with longer stretches of silence in between, until they stopped altogether. Then the hallways started to settle back into predictable patterns, and the members of their little band started to find their way back to each other.

It was a relief, but at the same time Rory’s heart sank because he knew what it had to mean.

They found Howie’s body in a third floor corridor near the main staircase. By the time they moved him back downstairs, his picture was already up in Reception.

Gibbis met them at the bottom of the stairs. 

“He got free. He overpowered me,” the alien said as the others trooped by him. “It might leave us alone now. Maybe now we’ll be safe.”

Neither Rory nor anyone else could be bothered to respond. They took Howie into the dining room and laid him out next to Joe before everyone sank, with varying degrees of exhaustion, into dining room chairs. 

“Was it worth it?” Rory asked after a long moment of silence.

More than one person gave him a sharp look, but Rory pressed on, looking at the Doctor who was idly fiddling with his sonic screwdriver.

“Did you learn anything from the monster? Were you able to communicate with it?”

“After a fashion.” The Doctor stopped with his tinkering and put away his sonic. “I’m just not sure how it’s going to help us yet.”

According to what the Doctor had learned from the monster, the hotel was an elaborate prison and the monster its warden. That much Rory did not find at all surprising. He found some of the rest a bit harder to swallow, though. And Rory wasn’t the only one.

“Whoa, wait a second,” Clint said. “You’re saying this thing doesn’t want to be killing us? It’s just acting on instinct?”

“It’s more than that,” the Doctor said. “It doesn’t act on instinct exactly. It practically is instinct. It’s ancient, so ancient that it no longer knows its own name if it ever had one. Our fear is what feeds it. It wants this to stop, but it can’t do it on its own. It needs our help.”

“And how the hell are we supposed to do that?” Coulson asked.

“Everything can be killed somehow. Even things that seem unkillable,” River said. 

As short pep talks went, that one sounded oddly despondent to Rory’s ears. And the look the Doctor gave River was just. . .weird. He wondered what was going on behind the curtain there.

“I haven’t quite worked that bit out yet,” the Doctor said. 

The Doctor’s eyes had drifted up into the corner. Rory turned his head to see a CCTV camera mounted there. 

“But I think,” he added, “it’s about time we let this mad hotel set up do some work in our favor.”

*****

Clint and River and Coulson always said that surveillance was 98% boredom. After hovering in the security office for a while, Amy was inclined to believe them.

She wandered back out to Reception and joined Rita, who was sitting on the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey,” Amy said.

“Hey.”

“Look, I wanted to tell you, I’m sorry about Howie,” Amy said. “He seemed like a nice kid.”

Rita might not be Howie’s family or even a proper friend, but she’d known him better than anyone else here had.

“Yeah,” Rita replied. “I wonder if his family will ever know what happened to him? I wonder if it’s possible to even find them?”

“Our SHIELD types? They’re pretty good at hunting down things like that,” Amy said. “When we get out of here, we can put them on the case.”

“You’re still convinced that we’re getting out of here, aren’t you?” Rita said.

“I am,” Amy said firmly.

Rita just nodded like she was humoring her, but didn’t voice any doubts out loud. “Have you told them yet?” she asked after a moment of silence.

Amy didn’t have to ask what she meant by that. Rita had been the only one present when Amy had found her room. It had been during all the mad dashing about, up and down the corridors, trying to find Howie before the monster did. Amy had denied seeing anything in that room, but apparently she wasn’t as good a liar as she’d hoped she was.

“I should go check on Rory,” Amy said. She’d caught sight of her husband wandering through the dining room—he was keeping an eye on Gibbis—and decided to take the easy out. “And as soon as I catch River I’ll ask her what SHIELD can do about tracking down Howie’s family,” she added, getting up off the step.

They’d take care of that first thing, once they got out of here.

*****

Rita knew that there was only so much you could do to help a patient who wouldn’t admit to a problem. That was essentially what Amy was doing. She was denying that she’d got a bad diagnosis, but just under the surface, the woman was scared.

For her part, Rita felt unaccountably serene. There was always a sense of peace in accepting the inevitable.

Rita lay back on the stairs, the edges of the steps digging uncomfortably into her shoulder blades and the back of her head. She watched the staircase spiral up into darkness overhead. She closed her eyes, drew a long breath, and sighed.

“Praise him.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My best laid posting plans always seem to get a bit mucked up. I had planned to put the final chapter up tomorrow, but my internet connectivity has become mildly deranged. The problem will be fixed next week, thank goodness. 
> 
> In the meantime, it's facilitating a little weekend bonus. I'm going to go ahead and post the last chapter while my internet is working (since goodness knows what it will be doing tomorrow).
> 
> Thank you for stopping by and reading, and I wish everyone a Happy Holiday and a Happy and Safe New Year. Next up in the _Marvelous Tale_ 'verse will be _Tempered Schisms_ , in which well get to meet a few more familiar faces from SHIELD.

“Doctor?” 

There was no response from the Time Lord. Coulson glanced over to see him slouched down in his chair, glowering at the bank of screens in front of them.

“Do we know what we’re looking for?” Coulson asked, half prepared for the question to trigger an emotional eruption of some kind. The Doctor was giving off that same heavy, storm-cloud feeling that Clint did when he was building up to blow.

The Doctor apparently hadn’t reached that point just yet, but he sounded annoyed when he replied.

“Oh, I don’t know. The monster, the TARDIS, a giant _You May Disembark the Ride Here_ sign. It’s like klecksography, Agent Coulson. I’ll know it when I see it.”

“I think that’s pornography, not klecksography.”

“I’ll stick with ink blots, Agent Coulson. You can keep the naughty pictures.”

Coulson grinned and went back to watching the screens as well. Empty halls. Empty stairwells. Empty. . .wait.

The Doctor sat bolt upright at the same time Coulson saw it.

“Rita,” Coulson said. “What the hell is she doing?”

No one was supposed to stray from the common areas. They’d all agreed.

“No. No, no, no.” The Doctor’s arms flailed as he cast about for a second before snatching up the office telephone. “Get me a room number.”

Coulson stood so that he could squint at the screen, trying to make out a doorplate. “Room 501.”

*****

The Doctor felt a flare of hope when Rita answered the ringing room phone, carrying it back into the hall so that they could talk more or less face to face over the monitor.

“You started to praise it, didn’t you?” At Rita’s nod, the Doctor said, “Come back. We’ll find a way to stop it, I swear.”

“I can’t.” The Doctor didn’t like how calm Rita looked. How resolute. “I’ll put the rest of you in danger.”

“No, you won’t. It only wants the person who’s praising it.”

Clint and River had appeared in the doorway of the security office. The Doctor spared them half a glance before pointing an imperious finger at them.

“Room 501. Go!” the Doctor ordered. 

He didn’t look around to see that he was being obeyed, but he heard Clint and River go running out of the room, heading for Reception and the stairs. The Doctor kept his focus on the screen, on Rita.

“Rita, listen to me. Clint and River are coming. Just go back in the room and wait for them. Please.”

*****

“What the hell?” Rory said as Clint and River dashed through Reception, heading up the stairs two at a time.

“Hey!” Amy yelled after them, but they had already disappeared around the first turn of the staircase. 

Spies. They moved fast.

“Something’s happened,” Amy said, heading for the security office.

“Yeah and nothing good,” Rory replied, following along behind.

*****

“No splitting up,” River said as she and Clint hit the fifth floor landing and paused for a visual check of their surroundings.

“Agreed,” Clint replied. “Do you have any clue which way we should go?”

In a real hotel, there was a logic to the way rooms were laid out. There was no logic at all in this place. Hell, they were gambling just by assuming that Room 501 would be on the fifth floor. All Clint knew for sure was that they had a clear view of four corridors from here, and there was no sign of Rita down any of them.

River shook her head with a grimace of frustration. Clint knew it was wearing on her nerves, having her usually preternatural sense of direction failing her.

“Let’s try this way,” she said, nodding toward the left-hand corridor.

Neither one of them voiced aloud what they knew for a fact. The walls and corridors changed at will here. They could be fifty miles from Rita for all they knew.

But they were damn well going to try to save her.

*****

Coulson could tell by Rita’s body language that the monster must be getting closer. The Doctor must be able to see it as well. He sounded increasingly desperate as he tried to convince Rita to take cover.

He wasn’t going to succeed. Coulson had seen Rita’s brand of calm before. She knew she was going to die and she was ready.

“I want you to do me one last favor, Doctor.” Rita’s voice came small and staticy through the phone’s speaker. “I don’t want you to witness this. Please, let me be robbed of my faith in private.”

The Doctor kept trying, though, right up until the point that Rita put down the phone and a dark shadow appeared in the corner of the monitor. Only then did the Doctor honor Rita’s wish and turn off the screen.

Coulson heard a soft sound, and turned to see Amy and Rory. Amy had her face buried in Rory’s chest. Rory just looked quietly horrified, much like Coulson felt.

Selfishly, he just hoped that the monster was long gone by the time Clint and River found the scene.

*****

They were too late.

It had been a long-shot anyway, River knew that. That didn’t keep stop her heart from dropping when she and Clint ran around a corner and saw Rita sitting in the floor at the far end of the corridor, slumped against the wall. River and Clint sprinted down the corridor, even though they knew what they were going to find.

Rita looked peaceful. She was clearly dead. Clint tried to find a pulse anyway.

“Dammit,” he said quietly, dropping his hand from her throat.

River reached over and squeezed his wrist. She knew that Clint could sometimes take it hard when a bystander got caught in the crossfire. She wasn’t fond of it herself, and Rita and Howie had been a bit more than just random bystanders. With her other hand, River picked up the telephone receiver and gently laid it back in the cradle. 

They remained still and silent for a moment before River asked, “Can you bring her?”

Clint cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said.

With River leading the way and Clint carrying Rita’s body, they made their way back downstairs.

*****

Rory winced at a particularly loud crescendo of breaking glass.

They were all assembled in the dining room once again. Rita had been laid out beside Howie and Joe. Gibbis was perched on a distant chair worrying at his fingernails. River, Clint, and Coulson were sitting in a silent spy-cluster wearing identical distant and unreadable expressions. The Doctor was venting his feelings by systematically destroying the kitchen.

Amy was sitting hip-to-hip with Rory, her chin resting on her fist. She rolled her head slightly toward the kitchen.

“Do you think we should go in there and stop him?” she asked.

“Nah.” Rory tiredly rubbed his hands over his face. “Let him get it out. He’ll run out of breakables eventually.”

When things quieted down and the Doctor emerged from the kitchen, he still looked like the oncoming storm that so many people compared him to. He threw himself into a chair for about ten seconds before he jumped back up and started pacing.

“It’s not fear,” he said, like the rest of them had been privy to whatever thoughts had been going through his head. “It can’t be fear. Rita wasn’t afraid. She was brave and calm. She had. . .”

The Doctor trailed off, spinning around to face the others. “Faith. That has to be it. It’s not fear, it’s faith.”

“What the hell are you talking about now?” Clint asked. He’d been half-heartedly snappish since he and River had brought Rita’s body down.

“That’s what the creature is after,” the Doctor said. “It has to be. All of the people it’s taken have had faith in something. Not just religious faith, like Rita. Joe had dice cufflinks and a chain with a horseshoe. He believed in good luck charms. Howie believed in conspiracies. That’s why this place is designed to terrify us. Fear makes people fall back on their most fundamental faith, and then the creature steps in and replaces that faith. That’s why the people it’s marked say--”

“Praise him,” Amy said. 

Rory hadn’t found the room in this place that was specially designed for him, but at Amy’s words he felt his insides ice over. Somewhere off in the distance, Rory could have sworn he heard the creature roar.

*****

They had taken to the corridors again.

The Doctor wracked his brain as they ran, trying to come up with a plan. They had the key to the creature now. The creature wanted to be defeated. The Doctor just needed to put it together.

He had to save Amy. He would save Amy.

The Doctor and Rory were dragging Amy along between them while the others followed close behind. They paused for breath in a place there the corridors converged. 

“What do we do?” Gibbis was all but having a fit from fright. “It’s coming for us. We should just leave her and--OW!”

Gibbis broke off with a pained cry, clutching his ear. The Doctor had missed what happened, but given the death glare Clint was giving the cowering alien, he suspected that the spy was the source. Pity that there wasn’t time to applaud.

The creature roared in the distance.

“We need to buy some time,” the Doctor said. Until he could figure out what to do.

“I think I might have an idea,” River said.

*****

“Are you sure about this?” Coulson asked.

“Not even remotely,” River replied.

“I think it’s about as solid as strategy around here is going to get,” Clint said.

They were standing three abreast in the corridor. Behind them, River could hear the retreating footsteps of the Doctor, Amy, Rory, and Gibbis. Ahead of them, a shadow was growing as the creature approached the turn in the hallway.

Killing or injuring the creature might be beyond their means, even though it was three on one, but the hope was that River, Clint, and Coulson might be able to slow it down. That was assuming that the Doctor was on the right track this time. If the creature killed by taking a person’s faith and twisting it onto itself, then it would be out of luck with Strike Team Delta. The three of them had faith in each other beyond all else. The monster couldn’t steal that from them while they were facing it down together.

Or so River hoped.

The creature came around the corner. This was the first time River had seen it head on. It was so tall that its horns scraped against the ceiling. It paused as it spotted their three-man barrier in the corridor and bellowed.

Time to put the theory to the test.

*****

“Do you think they’re okay?” Amy asked as Rory steered her along.

She saw Rory’s mouth tighten and he just shook his head. Amy knew that look. _Other priorities right now._

The roaring and thumping footsteps had died off there for a few minutes, but now they were back again and closer than ever. That had to mean that the monster had somehow got around the agents or gone right through them.

“This way!” The Doctor jerked Amy (and by extension Rory) toward a door. Amy had just a split second to note the familiar number. 

The hotel was apparently still determined to play merry hell with them.

*****

Inside the room, there was a little, red-haired girl in a nightgown, winter coat, hat, and rubber boots. She was sitting on a suitcase and staring up at the stars. Little Amelia Pond, the night she had waited in her garden for the strange raggedy Doctor to come back for her.

She must have been afraid that he was never, ever coming back.

Somehow, Amy’s fear and source of faith had wound up being the same thing. The Doctor wondered if that was a first for this place. If it were, it wasn’t going to be for long. The monster was homing in on Amy’s faith in the Doctor. That meant that faith had to go.

“I can’t save you from this.” The Doctor had knelt down right in front of her, forehead almost touching hers. “There’s nothing I can do to stop this.”

The Doctor knew that he was hurting his little Amelia. But that was the whole point. She wasn’t his little Amelia anymore.

The door burst open behind them. The Doctor was half-aware that Rory had been forced into a corner.

“Forget your faith in me. I’m not a hero. I really am just a madman in a box.”

Even if Amy’s life wasn’t at stake, even if sacrificing her faith in him wasn’t the only thing that might save her, it was high time for this. It was time for him and his glorious Pond to see each other as they really were. Not as the invincible Time Lord and the little girl in the garden, but as just the Doctor and Amy.

The monster let out an almighty roar and then retreated. That was how the Doctor knew that they had succeeded.

“Amy Williams. It’s time to stop waiting.”

*****

The masks were off.

Even the hotel had reveled its true face, the endless interior reverting to one large room lined with a black and blue hologrid system. River saw the TARDIS standing off to one side, and more importantly she saw the Doctor, Amy, and Rory. Rory hurried over to meet them.

“You guys are okay?” he said.

River nodded, glancing at Clint and Coulson for an unnecessary double-check.

“We’re okay,” she said. “The monster couldn’t get by us. It tried, but it wound up pulling back. We tried to get out in front of it again, but we couldn’t.”

Rory nodded. “The Doctor said what you three did weakened it. And then. . .well.” 

He looked back at the Doctor and Amy and the figure on the floor between them.

The monster was dying. Or, according to the Doctor, the _warden_ was dying. This whole misadventure had been because they had accidentally crossed the path of a malfunctioning, automated prison floating through space.

The Doctor knelt beside the dying creature, one hand resting on the beast-like head. It took a deep rasping breath, growling lowly.

“What is it saying?” Amy asked.

The creature’s language was nothing that River could translate, but the Doctor tilted his head in concentration and, after a moment, started to speak.

“’An ancient creature, drenched in the blood of the innocent, drifting in space through an endless, shifting maze. For such a creature, death would be a gift.’” The Doctor rested his hand on the beast’s chest. “Then accept it,” he said, “and sleep well.”

He started to pull away, but paused when the creature spoke again. The Doctor frowned and his eyes came up to catch River’s for just a second.

“I wasn’t talking about myself,” he said.

They stayed until the creature took its final breath, then silently filed back into the TARDIS. It was beyond time for them to be on their way.

*****

**Epilogue**

_All Saints Day_

Time had little meaning on board the TARDIS, which the Doctor supposed was an irony of sorts. A thing that traveled in Time was not necessarily obliged to have any respect for Time. See Exhibit A: _Doctor, The._

In his mind, though, it felt like it must be the wee small hours, probably because everyone else had retired ages ago. After they had dropped Gibbis off on his home planet, Amy had put the SHIELD agents to bed and then she and Rory had retreated back to their room. Everyone was exhausted after their sojourn in the hotel/prison, the Doctor included. Unfortunately, there were too many thoughts whirling through his brain for him to sleep. Instead the Doctor was unwinding in his usual manner, puttering around the darkened control room.

It was pure chance that he happened to glance up and see River walk past the room.

River was unnaturally good at finding her way around the TARDIS, something that the Doctor had tucked away in his _Ways In Which There Is Something Peculiar About River Song_ file. Oh, that was a very large file indeed, and made no smaller by the events of the last day. The Doctor wondered if River couldn’t sleep for the same reasons he couldn’t.

If that were the case, the last thing she was likely in the mood for was the company of her own personal boogeyman. And yet the Doctor couldn’t just set aside his curiosity. He waited for River to gain a bit of distance and then quietly followed her.

He found River in one of the TARDIS’s kitchens, the lovely cluttered one that he and his companions tended to gravitate to when they needed a snack or a cup of tea. River had put the kettle on and was poking through a cabinet for a mug.

“There are some biscuits in the left-hand cupboard if you want some,” he volunteered from the shadows. 

He didn’t miss the way River flinched at his voice. Because he had startled her? Or just because it was him? After what he had seen in her room, the question bothered the Doctor more than he cared to admit.

“You know, Doctor,” she said, turning toward him, “it’s really not a good idea to sneak up on someone who kills people for a living.”

Her tone was light, but there was a weight in her eyes that the Doctor was not used to seeing in human beings. Of course, he’d surmised from the beginning that River wasn’t human, at least not entirely. He still, to his frustration, after over a year sifting for clues, couldn’t say exactly what she was.

She was his friend. He did know that much.

“Yes. I’ve been told that before. Several times, now that I think on it.” The Doctor stepped out of the shadows and took a seat at the kitchen table. “I heard someone moving about. I thought it might be you. I think we should talk, don’t you?”

He was his friend’s worst fear. That would seem to warrant a conversation.

But River had put back on the careful mask that always seemed to be in place when she was around him. She carried two mugs of tea over to the table and took the seat across from him.

“You want to talk about what was in my room,” she said matter-of-factly.

With those words alone, the Doctor knew that he wouldn’t be getting any answers from her. He had to try, though. Time could be rewritten, and that meant that whatever he would do to River Song to make her fear him so much could be changed. 

Except that she wouldn’t let him.

“I won’t tell you,” she said. “But think on this, Doctor. I’m here.” She glanced around the kitchen. “We’re up drinking tea together in the middle of the night, or whatever passes for night given that we’re nowhere near a sun. Whatever you may have done or may do to me. . .right now, at this moment, it doesn’t matter. All right?”

That seemed to be as much as he was going to get. It wasn’t answers and it wasn’t exactly forgiveness for transgressions he’d yet to commit, but that was probably too much for the Doctor to ask.

Answers would come in time. They always did. In the meantime, it was as River said.

For now, they were all right.


End file.
